Condominiums, apartment complexes and other multi-unit dwellings often have regulations forbidding the attachment of antennas or satellite dishes to the roof or outside walls of the building. Because a satellite dish requires line-of-sight reception, such regulations may effectively prevent a condominium or apartment dweller from owning such a device. While many multi-unit dwellings have balconies providing access to the outdoors, the exposure of the balcony is not necessarily in the direction needed to receive a broadcast from a satellite. A portable floor platform for mounting the antenna is therefore not sufficient in most cases.
Satellite antennas must be cleaned and maintained occasionally in order to keep them in optimum working condition. The antennas must also be aimed with reasonable precision at the target satellite. Cleaning and maintaining often involves movement of the antenna for access and as a result of the cleaning or maintaining operations themselves. A satellite dish antenna may also be moved in order to protect the dish from severe weather. It is therefore important that a satellite dish antenna may be conveniently retracted and returned to the same position and re-aimed with relative ease.
Further, the elderly and disabled must be capable of retracting, extending and re-aiming the satellite dish.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide a satellite dish antenna mount that may be used in multi-unit dwellings without attachment to an exterior surface of the building, and that may be retracted, extended and re-aimed conveniently in order to permit cleaning, maintenance and protection from the weather.